


Stars Hide Your Fires

by howlingautumn (orphan_account)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Female Bilbo, Gen, M/M, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4433732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/howlingautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stars, hide your fires; let not the light see my black and deep desires." Macbeth, Act I, Scene IV.<br/>Bluebell Baggins is a perfectly respectable hobbit. She has not been out of the Shire since she was a young and enjoys her quiet life a Bag End with her books, armchair, and garden. It is only when a very old friend comes knocking that she starts the adventure of a lifetime and realizes that sometimes a long journey is just what you need to remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There and Back . . . Again?

**Author's Note:**

> Formerly called themoonyautumn.

As Bluebell Baggins dead sprints up the only road in Hobbiton to Bag End before Lobelia Sackville-Baggins finally nicks those silver spoons, she remembers.

She remembers how much her muscles ached that first day on her very long journey. She remembers the sound of thirteen dwarves singing of home lost and how her feet were already twitching. She remembers her mother smoothing back her wild curls and smiling.

All of this she remembers as she reaches her green circle door, panting, and what will soon be a hotly debated topic throughout all of the Shire, cursing. “That is my mother’s glory box, thank you very much!”

The auctioneer places his gavel down out of surprise only, “And who might you be?” Bell stops, thinks for a moment, contract still clutched tightly in hand, bag slung across her back precariously, and know she must be a sight to see. Then with a laugh that will be later be described as lunatic, unrespectable, and off the rocker, she throws her head back, looks to the sky, and smiles.

“Who am I,” she says, “who am I? I am Barrel-Rider, I am Elf Friend, and I am BLUEBELL BAGGINS OWNER OF THIS ESTATE!” Every hobbit in the near vicinity stops, one drops the load of wine they were carrying-ahem, stealing-and just stands looking shocked. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins sniffs, “I’ve never seen that . . . hobbit before in my life!”

Bell never thought it possible that she could roll her eyes as hard as she does or that she would ever do so in public. So, in a spur of the moment decision that shows just how tired and . . . . well, angry she is, she stomps over to Lobelia, grabs the spoon the greedy cousin had grabbed and throws them straight into the air.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself Lobelia Sackville-Baggins! Lying and thieving! It is so, so, so, . . . .” And Bluebell Baggins, daughter of the late Bungo Baggins and Belladonna Took Baggins, sits on the grass which is still green by Hamfast Gamgee’s careful hand, and starts to laugh. “So unrespectable! Oh, what will they say?! The Baggins name thrown into the dust by an adventure once again!” She keeps laughing, in fact, until almost all of the hobbits in the vicinity drop the stolen possessions and waddle home to wash their hands of whatever has infiltrated the newly dubbed Mad Baggins very soul.

Without much prologue Bell flings herself onto the ground, stretching her limbs, and closing her eyes as the warm sun heats up the rest of her. It only takes a few seconds for the rest of the shocked and grousing uninvited guests to prod the auctioneer into standing over her and clearing his throat until she opens her eyes once more, and asks, tersely, “Yes?”

“Miss Baggins,” he starts, “you must understand, you were gone for many, many months and most thought you dead. It would have been a waste to let your estate sit much longer. Do you see?”  
With a long suffering sigh learned from a certain someone she runs her hand across the soft Shire grass, “Hamfast didn’t.”

The auctioneer guffaws, “The gardener, Miss Baggins?”

Sting is pressed against his chest in an instant and on instinct for that matter, “Hamfast Gamgee is one of the kindest hobbits that I have ever had the pleasure to meet! And furthermore,” she swings in a full circle at the last word, “I think I’ll leave my cousin Drogo, and the Gamgee family my entire estate!” Tucking Sting back into her sheath she grins, “I’ll make up my will within a fortnight.”

Picking up the contract she shoves it into the auctioneer’s hands, “That’ll prove who I am, I believe.” Swinging her pack onto her shoulders, Bell gives a curt nod to the few that remain, and then, pausing at her door she presses her hand across Gandalf’s mark.

_Remember the words._

_“Can you promise I’ll come back?”_

_“No,” Gandalf says, quiet as she has ever seen him, “and if you do you will not be the same.”_

I’m back, Bell thinks, mostly for her parent’s sakes. And before she can take that final step into the house that her father built for a Took, a voice behind her asks, “Who is this that you pledged your service too, this Thorin Oakenshield?”

Bell closes her eyes, “He, he . . . . . he is the most stubborn, squat at directions, infuriating, and loyal creature I have ever known.” She takes a few steps back, grabs the contract, takes a step inside and says, “And please, dear hobbits, get off of my lawn.”


	2. Midnight Breakfast, Part One.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Midnight Breakfast was a tradition for the Tooks-Bagginses. Now, in the quiet of Bag End, a hobbit celebrates alone . . .

Bag End was quiet.

In a luxuriously comfortable hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. A singular hobbit. In days past there had been cousins, family, friends, and guests filling the tunnel like hallways and guest rooms and kitchens until well past midnight. Past the early hours of the morning when the sunrise would break the spell cast upon the estate that turned the old to young and serious gentlehobbits into giggling young tweens keen on catching fireflies.

That was the magic of it.

The only magic Bluebell Baggins reasoned Bag End had kept was the sort of magic kept behind the closed door of expansive libraries and pressed between pages to be read on rainy days when no visitors would come knocking.

She wished that today had been one of those days.

The morning started as usual, she woke and bathed and dressed and ate and read. Then she went out to the gardens to tend to her father’s tomatoes and her mother’s flowers. And after that she brewed late morning tea and sat out on one of her front benches with her tea (one splash of cream and a spoonful of honey) and latest book. Thus the morning passed in slow succession with the occasional neighbor waving and an hour long conversation with Hamfast over the state of her front flowerbeds.

( **Hamfast** : Bluebell, please tell me you didn’t cross those poor flowers.

 **Bell** : Hamfast, please tell me you aren’t personifying those poor flowers.)

The hobbit never would never have ceased reading if it were not for a tall shadow disturbing her light.

“Good morning,” she says warily to the stranger clothed in all gray, placing her book to the side.

The stranger crinkles forehead slightly, “What do you mean good morning? Do mean to wish me a good morning or are you meaning to say that it will be a good morning whether I want it to or not? Or, do you mean to say that you in particular are feeling good on this morning? I could go on, you know, being specific is often key to good conversation.” Underneath that entirely unrespectable beard, a small smile comes into play.

Bell places on the face that means she is struggling not to to roll her eyes. Sometimes that face comes into play a lot. Though, after years of respectable practice, she has it perfected. “Um, I suppose all of them at once.” She cranes her neck to look at the strange figure and they stare at one another until she coughs, “Right, yes, well if you’ll excuse me . . . good morning.”

Gandalf the Grey heaves up his “walking stick” and laughs. “To think I’ve lived to be “Good morning-ed” by Belladonna Took’s daughter! Calm and sit, Bluebell. I’ve only need of someone to share in an adventure with!”

Bell stops in her tracks to the door and turns at the mention of Belladonna’s name, “And who are you exactly?”

The old wizard snorts a bit, “Why, Bluebell, I’m only one of your family’s oldest friends, I am Gandalf and Gandalf is well, me!” He watches the hobbit with keen eyes until she relents with surprise and a little shame, “I don’t imagine anyone past Bree would want an adventure, Master Wizard and I hope you will come for tea soon but I really, really must get back to my . . . errands! Errands, yes, my errands.”

Bluebell Baggins turns once more as the wizened old wizard chuckles, “You are a poor liar, my friend and I am no button salesman. You’ll have plenty of skills to learn before our adventure commences!”

And with that Bell steps to her door with all the grace of a drunken newborn deer and yells, “GOOD MORNING!” After closing the newly painted porthole as quickly as possible, she misses Gandalf muttering to himself about Old Took’s fireworks and marking her door with a symbol of origin unknown.

 

Bell stands against the door, taking in all the comforts of home. The smell of apple pie, old books, and candles. Her favorite armchair sporting a blanket that compliments it's lovely blue color. Her breath still comes in tiny pants though, and she can hardly breathe through the weight sitting on her chest and mind. An adventure?! What a preposterous idea! What will the neighbors think! Yavanna, Bell, you could have at least invited him in! Your mother would have had your hide for treating Gandalf that way! Breathe, Bluebell, breathe, it will be fine, just stop thinking about the . . . possibilities. 

The only thing that chases thoughts of wizards, fireworks, and adventure from the young Baggins’ mind is the tradition tonight holds.

  
The Midnight Breakfast looms fast. Oh, what an awful lot of cooking to be done.


End file.
